7 Signs you’re overtraining

Welcome back to How To Twenty-something, today’s episode is in relation to what I briefly talked about in episode 38 when you’re working to integrate exercise into your schedule and use it as a tool to help you, not hurt you!

Over the course of today, I am going to explain the harmful effects exercise can have on the body, signs that you’re doing too much in the gym and how to get yourself out of this kind of sticky situation

So your relationship to exercise can go from unhealthy to healthy

If you are someone who loves the gym and working out, listen up because you might be causing more damage to your body than you even realize

And I know, because as I said the other week, I used to be the queen of overtraining and even now I sometimes get too carried away and suffer the repercussions for the next day or two

So let’s dive into how you’re treating your body and what shifts can be made so you maintain a healthy relationship with yourself and not feel beaten down by the end of your workout or even end of your week

Because your workouts should leave you filled with energy – and not like you’re a zombie learning how to walk again

To begin, I’m going to define what overtraining is because some of y’all might think your overtraining habit is normal when it comes to exercising… 

Overtraining is what happens when the intensity or the volume of the exercise you’re doing exceeds your body’s ability to recover and will hinder your performance for the next few days or if you continue to ignore your body’s signals then your performance will be so hindered you’ll reach a point of complete destruction

Thereby increasing your risk of injury and if you have physique goals, overtraining will actually push you further from those goals due to all of the inflammation happening internally and your body’s inability to recover

Overtraining often pairs with undereating so not only are you overdoing it on the exercise side of things but you are also not helping your body’s ability to recover because you aren’t properly nourishing it

Maybe you have a fear of gaining weight or a goal to lose a lot of weight so you think doing more will get you there faster

And this is where the saying less is more sort of comes into play

Because the more you try to do, the less you’re going to see the results you’re after

You want to be able to get to a point where you can do the least amount of work to elicit the most amount of change and eat freely without the fear of gaining 10lbs of fat

I know it sounds counterintuitive to do less and you’ll be able to see more results, but your body can only handle so much stress, and yes even the good kind of stress is still stress 

And like I said, your workout should not leave you feeling depleted by the end of it or even by the end of the day it should leave you feeling really good

This post-exercise negative feeling happens when i personally do cardio

I feel like absolute crap after a cardio class because of how much extra stress is put on my body.. I feel like I can’t function and need to lay down

Your workout should leave you feeling energized for the rest of your day, as I mentioned in episode 36 when you’re working to create your healthy foundation

If you are walking out of the gym dragging your feet or feeling light headed and woozy and like you need to lay on the floor for an hour.. Then you did too much and you need to dial it all wayyyy back

And if you are chasing that feeling then I think you need to have a serious conversation with yourself as to why you’re working out because it sounds like you are punishing your body rather than striving for good health

Sometimes, on days when I accidentally do too much, when the end of the day comes I feel like I can’t even stand up to make my dinner

Again my job as a trainer puts a lot of steps into my day and the days where I coach more than one group class i know I can’t also workout because I know I’m already going to be walking a lot that day

We’re talking 6 or 7 miles by lunchtime a lot

But on the topic of feeling depleted, another sign of overtraining is extreme fatigue no matter how much rest you get

You feel like you can’t get enough sleep and have low energy in all of your activities, whether that be work, play, gym, or regular household chores and errands

Then there’s the opposite of feeling like you’re not getting enough sleep which is not being able to fall asleep or stay asleep for that matter

This is also what happens to me where I’m so tired by the end of the day and feel restless like my brain and body can’t relax but my eyes can’t stay open

And I lay there and think dammit I did too much today.. I need to take a rest day tomorrow

So if you’re experiencing insomnia, where you can’t fall asleep and this isn’t a regular occurrence diagnosed by a doctor, or you can fall asleep but find yourself waking up throughout the night and not getting the deep sleep you need so you wake up tired, then you overtrained that day and need to cool it for the next day or two

But other than feeling depleted, having excessive fatigue, or disturbed sleep, there are some very obvious telltale signs of doing too much as well as some hidden ones that you might not even realize is happening

I’ll say one of the biggest, easiest to recognize, signs of overtraining is persistent muscle soreness, meaning it’s possible to overtrain certain muscles and not your whole body

Some soreness is normal after switching up your workout routine or pushing the weights a little harder than usual, but you should still be able to function as normal the next day and not be in a lot of pain

If you’re new to strength training then you are probably going to feel sore after almost every workout since it’s all new stimuli to your body so it hasn’t learned the adaptation process yet

But soreness for several days is not a good thing.. Remember my sunburn analogy from the other week? Your sunburn is your soreness.. Too much isn’t good and you need to rest and recover before going back out in the sun again, or this case, working out that muscle group again

I tell clients to let me know if they feel really sore the next day or two so i know to make a note in their file to do a little less next time and that we pushed the body a bit too far that time

This is going to happen every now and then, it’s a learning experience to see how your body responds and you can use that information as a baseline for what weights to choose the next time you do that workout

And then gradually increase the weights you’re picking so you don’t feel as though you need 1-3 business days to recover

But let’s say you do accidentally take your workout too far and wake up the next day with a lot of soreness, the best thing you can do for yourself is to go for many walks throughout the day and drink a lot of water

Don’t go back to the gym and work those muscles until your soreness is gone, instead go for walks to keep the body moving and blood flowing otherwise the soreness, more so if it’s in your legs, is going to feel so much worse because of how stiff you’ll feel if you stay seated the whole day

So walk it out, even stretch it lightly, do some yoga, invite good blood flow to enhance the healing and recovery time

Sign number 4 that you’ve done too much in your workout or day in general is if you’re experiencing some drastic mood changes

I know exercise releases dopamine and weightlifting releases testosterone, both of which help your mood and make you feel happier and calmer, but overtraining has the opposite effect

Because like everything in life, too much of anything is not good for you

So instead of that happy and calm feeling you are feeling more anxious, depressed, irritable, and any negative emotion you can think of

Maybe you feel like you’re experiencing a range of emotions where you’re happy one moment and then one thing sets you off and your emotions fall all over the place

Honestly, through researching this episode I can really pinpoint how my mood would drastically change when I was overtraining on the regular back in 2020.. Yes there were other stressful things going on and I was using exercise to cope with that stress, but I also know I probably overreacted to a lot things that were happening with my boyfriend at the time and my relationship with my mom

I could not get a good grasp on managing my own emotions.. Again taking it with a grain of salt because I was unemployed, my boyfriend was not the best, and my mom and I had our valid arguments

But it really makes me think that the amount of exercise I was doing was probably contributing to the negativity in my relationships

So if your emotions feel fragile, regardless of the extra stress probably going on in your life and you’re unsure if you’re overtraining, allow me to tell you that you are overtraining and you need to decrease the intensity and frequency of your workouts

Which on that topic, if you’re questioning how to decrease the intensity, there is a formula that you can use and it’s sets times reps times weights per that body part meaning you can decrease the sets, the reps or the weights you’re using the scale back how much you are working that specific body part of even your entire body on a weekly aspects

The last three signs of overtraining that I’m going to mention are largely exacerbated by your relationship to food

They are loss of appetite, hormonal imbalances, and increase in injury

If you are experiencing a significant decrease in appetite, not in a way where you’re purposely trying to cut out calories, but on a day to day basis, where you’re exerting a lot of energy and aren’t feeling very hungry, then you have done too much

I’m super guilty of this one too.. I told you I used to have a bad relationship with my body and would hammer it down to prevent it from gaining unwanted fat and now I’m here to help you avoid the mistakes I made

I would do these hour to hour and a half long outdoor workouts in like 85 degree weather and think it was so weird that I wasn’t starving by the end of it and there are a number of reasons for why this was happening

The biggest one is dehydration.. When you are taking part in a lot of activity you are going to be sweating a lot more and not replenishing your body with good electrolytes at the rate that you are expending this energy  

Overtraining also places your body in a state of fight or flight because of how stressed out it is.. Even if you’re choosing this stressed state and aren’t actually being attacked

As a result your nervous system is going to prioritize resources in your body for immediate energy instead of the food that’s in your system or halts the need for more food to enter your system because it believes it’s fighting for it’s life and needing food would get in the way of that survival instinct

Your blood flow will literally leave your digestive tract and significantly slow the digestion process to go to your arms and legs as that’s the signal you’re sending to your body

That you need to move as quickly as possible and nothing else matters in that moment

You can also lose your appetite because your body is trying to regulate the energy within your body as your workout is exceeding the energy that food is providing and as a result, your system is working to restore equilibrium between these energy sources

I know that sounds like it should have the opposite effect and make you more hungry but your body loves to be balanced so it’s going to prioritize what’s happening in its immediate environment before understanding what it’s needs actually are

And lastly when you are excessively exercising, you are probably low in nutrients and some nutrients play a role in appetite regulation so when you’ve sweat out these nutrients or your body has burned them for fuel, you are now lacking what you need to ignite that appetite, thereby reducing your hunger cues

So if you aren’t hungry after a lot of movement, mainly cardio, then you are overtraining

Overtraining can also severely impact your hormones

For example, if you are women and you experience irregular cycles or even amenorrhea which is a loss of your period, then you are overtraining and thereby harming your body

Your period is the best sign that you are healthy because from an evolution standpoint, your body would not bring a child into a dangerous and stressful environment 

And if you are sending extreme stress signals through your body, it’s going to respond with not allowing you to reproduce as it’s not safe to do so

Your period is your sign of good health and that your system is operating well, that is if you aren’t on any sort of birth control

This will also affect your sex drive again because if you’re stressed out your body is not going to promote reproductive behavior, so low sex drive is also a sign of too much stress in your life

If you are suffering with acne along your jawline and cheeks, that is also a sign of a hormonal imbalance.. Now I do want to say that I am not a doctor so if any of what I’m saying is alarming to you please consult your doctor before making any changes

But your skin is your largest organ and will communicate to you anything that is happening internally

This can show up in acne, skin discoloration, eczema, psoriasis, and anything of the sort

That being said, in 2022 I was suffering with what looked like hormonal acne, when what was really happening was I was having an allergic reaction to dairy

But I also know that in 2020 my skin was looking rough and it was due to too much exercise on a regular basis and the masks didn’t help.. It wasn’t until I cooled my workouts when I returned to work and then also started supplementing with ashwagandha, which is good for stress, did I start seeing improvements in my skin all the way up until I developed my dairy allergy

When you get to a point of helping your body instead of hurting it, it becomes much much easier to pinpoint what’s going on internally

My mom wanted me to see a dermatologist and go on accutane or even start up with birth control and I told her my skin problems are a symptom of something going on internally and those are band aid fixes and I was right, at first my skin was telling me my hormones were out of whack due to my workouts, and then 2 years later, my skin was telling me I wasn’t digesting something well

Again consult a doctor or a specialist before you make any bold moves, but I’m here to bring awareness to my own situations and experiences to hopefully wake you up to your own situations

And the last thing that I know I am also guilty of and was directly related to depriving myself of food while doing too much exercise is an increase in injury

Whether that’s tearing, straining, or spraining a ligament, tendon, or muscle or dislocating or breaking a bone.. When your body is overtrained your are more prone to a decrease in coordination due to the fatigue which will contribute to an increase in accidents and the severity of those accidents

Not to mention the nutrient deficiency due to the overworking and undereating as that’s what happened to me in college, not once but twice!

I don’t want to scare you, but at the same time I want you to help prevent you from falling down my path and treat your body better because your body deserves better

During my sophomore year of college, I decided I was going to self train for a half marathon and did zero research because my exact thought process was, how hard could it be you just run for 13.2 miles

So I set out to keep increasing the amount of miles I ran every single day and was also not eating nearly enough nutrient dense foods

My breakfasts were an apple or banana with peanut butter and dry cereal.. Like where’s the protein, it was all sugar and carbs with a touch of fat

One of these runs was on campus and class had just gotten out so i had to run off the curb and back on and one of those off the curb moments I strained my achilles

But I was determined.. I was young and dumb, but determined nonetheless, so I kept on running

After about a month of doing that, another area in my foot started hurting, so much so that I would limp for the first mile until the pain numbed out, continued running for another 7-8 miles, come home and then literally drag my foot for the rest of the day because of the amount of pain I was in.. and I proceeded to do that for another 3 weeks until I finally grew some brain cells and went to the doctor

Funny enough, I actually went for my achilles because by this point I had a bursa on my heel, but when I went in I told them another spot was also bothering me

They took x-rays and came back with the news that I broke my foot! 

I’d like to say I learned from that experience, but during my senior year I went right back into a new form of disordered eating and excessive exercising and went to play indoor soccer

At the start of the game I went to cut and change directions and my ankle disagreed causing 4 fractured bones in my ankle and 6 weeks of wearing a non-weight bearing cast followed by 4 weeks in a boot

All because I was undereating and overworking my body to fit a certain mold I had in my head and keep up my reputation in the family as being the smallest one

Overtraining can be so dangerous to your health, even when your intentions are to be healthy and workout

As we age our bodies can only handle so much stress on it, especially because as we age we have so much more stress in other areas of our lives 

We’re not as resilient as we once were

Our history of being an athlete and following those workouts will not support the aging version of you that exists today and will only continue to regress as time passes

It’s time to flip the script as to how you are treating your body and why you’re treating it in such a way so that you don’t end up like sophomore or senior version of me

So, now that you can recognize the 7 signs and symptoms of overtraining, here’s how to stop yourself from over training:

Step 1 is always awareness: recognize the signs

You’re not going to fall into every box I just mentioned, so even if one of these categories stood out to you that you related to.. Then use that as a sign as you’re doing too much

We’re all different, we’re all going to experience different effects from the same modalities, so it needs to start with you understanding how your body is responding to the workouts you’re doing

I personally cannot handle a lot of workouts in one week – on a good week I can strength train 4 times, but most of the time I average between 2 and 3 plus a cardio day where I’m playing a sport of some kind and it’s more social than anything

But that’s also because personal training puts greater demands on my body than my desk job did

However, I see other trainers at the gyms I work at do these crazy intense workouts and have great bodies 

Like one of them runs probably close to 50 miles in a week and strength trains and personal trains – just because my body can’t handle that type of intensity, doesn’t mean hers can’t

Although I have spoke to some of the females and they have not had a regular period for quite some time, if they even get it at all

So even though they aren’t sore, or having sleep issues, or hormonal acne, it doesn’t mean they aren’t overtraining

What I’m getting at is what you’re seeing on the surface, the surface being social media or in the gym, is telling you a different story than what’s actually happening underneath

So while step one is recognizing the signs, it’s also taking time to listen to your body and strategically plan in recovery days

Your body is not meant to go go go all the time, it needs rest in order to heal and recover

And I think it’s important to note that just because this workout regimen that you’re doing now has worked in the past, does not mean it will continue to support your lifestyle needs and energy demands for forever

Learn to adjust your workouts based on what’s happening outside of the gym as exercise should support the life you want to live, not dampen it

For example, when I had my 9-5 I was able to have a 6 day split routine with no repercussions

When I quit that job and moved to Charlotte, my activity levels skyrocketed simply because I had the time to be outside so much more and I was no longer sitting at a desk for 9 hours a day.. My body responded with gaining weight due to severe inflammation

And I had to scale back my workouts and not walk nearly as much in order to work with my body and not against it

My lifestyle changed so my workouts had to follow suit

Step 2, after you’ve recognized the signs that you are overtraining your body, is to stop exercising

Yes, completely stop until your body is fully rested

You can also periodize your workouts so it’s not the same intensity all year round – this is where you can introduce deload weeks where you go much much lighter in weights or slower in running

There was a study done, I have no idea when, but over the course of 16 weeks there were two groups that worked out.. Group 1 trained for 3 weeks and then took 1 week off and group 2 trained all 16 weeks and there was little to no difference in muscle built during this time

So taking a week off will not harm your progress.. You can do mobility, yoga, walking, or use light weights during this time or on any active recovery day that you take if you are someone who is extremely consistent with the gym and actually needs to take a break from it

Which honestly if the thought of taking a week off the gym terrifies you because you go 5-7 days a week and don’t want to lose your progress.. Then allow me to be the first to tell you that you’re probably overtraining due to this unhealthy relationship with exercise

Again you’re not going to lose the progress you’ve built in the time you take off

But your body is clearly communicating to you that it’s exhausted so you need to cool it with the workouts for however long it takes for you to stop experiencing the effects of overtraining and then add another day or two for good measure

This is especially true for my athletes who are used to the extreme workouts… rest and recover and your body will thank you for it and not hold on to all this extra water or fat because now you aren’t stressing it the fuck out

So to repeat step 1: recognize step 2: rest step 3: ask yourself why you’re working out or what do you want from your workouts because that answer is also going to change over time

I’ve said it before I workout for generally health but really for my mental health and to look good naked

Of course all of the other benefits are incredible as well such as balancing my hormones, getting to eat a lot more food because of my faster metabolism, the community at the gym, and aging gracefully – that is if you are using it and not abusing it

But why you’re working out could change from looking great to being able to play with your kids to being a good spouse to your partner to being more focused and disciplined at work, to your overall confidence in how you perceive yourself

Exercise as so many benefits that impact other parts of your life when you use it properly and have a healthy relationship with it

And you’re not chasing skinny but you’re chasing strength and health and longevity

Another way to help with overtraining is eating more and staying hydrated which is pretty self-explanatory given that one of the reasons why you are feeling the effects of overtraining is because you’re under eating or dehydrated

Hit your protein, carbs, and fats, consult a professional if you need help figuring out what that is for your unique body, add electrolytes to your water and drink more than half your bodyweight in ounces of water

The actual formula for how much water you need is your weight divided by 2 plus 20oz for every hour of exercise plus 20oz for how hot it is outside, in case you were curious about how much you should drink

But all in all, stopping the negative effects of overtraining involves a combination of strategic planning, listening to your body, fueling yourself properly, and implementing recovery modalities

And remember less is more when it comes to fitness – doing more cardio or strength training will not give you faster results.. And if it wasn’t clear enough by now… doing more will work against you and your aesthetic goals

It took me a while to get to a place where I’m okay with a lot of rest days and my body also rebelled a bit because it was so used to the extreme stress I was placing on it

So know that you might also experience a rebound period with some extra weight gain or water retention, but play the long game and before you know it you’re body will be thanking you for the decrease in strenuous activity

And you’ll be able to take a week off or a trip without the fear of losing everything you built

Actually if you’ve ever gone on a trip and realized how much better your workouts were afterwards, then you probably fall into the realm of overtraining

The last thing I want to touch on is both men and women can overtrain their bodies – it does take a lot more for men to suffer the repercussions because they have stable hormones and better muscle building capabilities

So if you are a woman, don’t compare yourself to a male that’s on the same journey and doing the same thing – our bodies are completely different and will respond in very different ways and at very different rates

And as always, if you need help with this type of direction and trusting the process of scaling back, please reach out to me as I know how hard it is on your mind to do less when you want to lose weight or look better

The link to my calendar is in the show notes

But please, do your body a favor and cool it with your workouts.. You should walk out of the gym feeling energized and alive and not like a zombie

Otherwise this concludes another episode of how to twenty-something, if you liked what you heard please share it on social media or with a friend, maybe a friend who notoriously overtrains their body, or thinks more is better

And thank you for listening to this podcast, I can’t wait to be in your headphones again next week with another brand new episode